MoCA Shanghai Envisage III

Stephanie Hsu
Contemporary Art and New Media in China
Blog Post #5
10/14/10

MoCA Shanghai Envisage III
Our Contemporary Art and New Media class had the opportunity to visit the MoCA Shanghai's Third Envisage Biennale, "Reflection of Minds," in the last few days before the exhibition's closure. "Reflection of Minds" was curated by Wang Weiwei and the renowned Ding Yi, a Shanghai-based abstract painter who has exhibited his works internationally. Having recruited young artists in China to participate, The MoCA Envisage 2010 sought to present the various directions of the Chinese contemporary art scene and the broad scope of ideas and concerns engaging young Chinese artists today. Through the works of these artists, the MoCA Envisage aimed to discuss the social and environmental issues of the rapidly changing contemporary world, as well as their impact on spirituality and aesthetics.
At the exhibition, I observed the wide variety of media, subject matter, and stylistic approaches among the works, finding myself both gripped by the distinctiveness of each work and searching for the logic that brought them to a shared space. Among all the works in the exhibition, I felt most engaged with Hu Xiaoxiao's sculptural installation "Black Dwarf" and Chen Wei's photography pieces "Everlasting Radio Wave" and "Honey in the Broadcast."
Hu Xiaoxiao's "Black Dwarf" consists of three sculptures of streetlamps and the "light" they emit. The three streetlamps range in height and employ three types of media to portray the solidified "light"—concrete, iron, and plastic. Through its contrived representation of light, the installation juxtaposes the natural and the purposeful with the artificial and the futile.
Chan Wei's type C-prints both show the intrusion and outbreak of something undesirable into a closed space. While "Honey in the Broadcast" deals with a swarm of bats, "Everlasting Radio Wave" depicts throngs of small black insects; in both pieces, the face of the human subject in the scene is not visible to the audience. Chan Wei's two works evoke strong feelings of isolation, discomfort, and imprisonment.
While the exhibition also featured paintings and sculptures, I felt most drawn towards the installation, photography, and video pieces—the installation pieces, for their creative manipulation of a basic gallery space, and the photography and video pieces, for seeming to grapple more effectively with the exhibition's focus on social and spiritual issues that are emerging with the changing times.

on MOCA

Minji Kim
Blog Entry 4

On October 7th, our class went to MoCA Shanghai envisage III. While
there were some interesting works, I thought that it would have been
much better if everything had a concrete explanation next to the work,
which might be difficult in reality since many works aim for
abstraction. Looking at different installation artworks, one piece
called "Try hard to forget" stood out to me, maybe because it was a
little easier to recognize its theme than other pieces' were. This
piece was done by Yu Tianzhu and it was to express "a personal and
collective amnesia, deliberately affecting identity, value, and
everything," according to the given pamphlet. In this mixed media
work, there were hundreds of people with all of their faces scratched
off. When I first looked at it, I thought it was to display feelings
of hatred, since the touch seemed quite rough. (Again, another
magnificent trait of art is that audiences can interpret it whichever
way they want it to be.) There was no explanation next to it, so I had
no idea what Tianzhu was thinking when making this piece, and still I
am unsure of his intentions behind it. But what attracted me was that
I 'felt' it somehow. In the photograph, people were all gathered
together to cheer for something, and even though I couldn't see their
facial expressions, I knew that they were smiling, laughing, and
delightfully talking to each other. It was strange to see faces
without physically seeing them. Within the overall
"seems-to-be-pleasurable" atmosphere, each individual's rubbed face
added opposite feelings of calmness. It was strange. But if I have to
define this work, I would say; serenity within clamor, sadness within
happiness, forgetfulness within effort for memories.

ReFlection of Minds – MoCA Shanghai Envisage III

Mikael Larsson

 to me
show details 12:57 PM (8 hours ago)
THIS IS MY BLOG ENTRY
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Duration: Sep. 12 , 2010 - Oct. 8 ,2010

This was my first visit to the Museum of Contemporary art in Shanghai.
Located in the heart of the Peoples park in the center of the city lies the

Fantastic building that is MoCA. Not particularly large, at least not
in comparison

to most contemporary museums I am used to, but not surprisingly as the
museum seems to operate in a different way. MoCA Shanghai seems to
focus on one or two shows at once, Instead

of showing their own collection.  With two floors surrounded by
encapsulating glass windows and with a ramp hugging the back wall to
the second floor, The museum has an open feel, more like

a gallery than a museum.
The biannual show on view, ReFlection curated by the famed Wang Weiwei

shows a fantastic slice of the what contemporary Chinese artists do.
Some works feel like they are not quite yet ready, and some works
don't reach their full potential, but it really does not bother me
that it at points feel like an art school show. The artists are very
young and don't have the experience or access to material as artists I
am used to see in western biannuals, but the ideas are there and they
are brilliant. Especially the photographic art captures my attention
especially do I love Liu Bolins playful photographs of himself painted
in front of buildings.

In the end the MoCA is a museum I will revisit and recommend others to
do to, especially this show.

SEX

The trip to “MoCA Shanghai Envisage Ⅲ Reflection of Minds” last week was very inspiring. I was especially impressed by the sculpture work of Tang Yin “Origin: No.11 bronze”. It is one of the series which “are a positive confirmation about the power of life, a new understanding and essential explanation about the origin of human being”( quoted from the work information). Obviously Tang Yin thinks that the origin of life is sex, so the series of sculpture feature two people having sex, more people having sex, people and snake having sex, etc. I found it interesting that the Chinese artist used snake in this work. As far as I know, the story of snake and original sin is told in the Bible, not in Chinese religion. Why does a Chinese artist have to express a sexual idea using implication from other culture? Chinese do have a very open attitude towards sex in the history. There is a “Chinese Museum of Sex Culture” in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. It is the only one of its kind in China. There are a lot of topics for artists who interested in sexuality to explore, and sexuality is not a very common subject in contemporary art in China. The past fifty years are probably the most conservative period in China in terms of sexuality. People today will still feel embarrassed to talk about sexuality in public. But artist should be the pioneer of changes of social concepts. That is why I am looking forward to see more interesting works portraying the topic of sexuality in China.